Gryffindor Common Room

Location information

Location

Permanent residents

Affiliation

"Once you’ve arrived inside Gryffindor Tower, come inside and be welcomed by the roaring fire, stuffed armchairs, and the great view we have from our windows. Our dormitories are reached by climbing the winding mahogany staircase, decorated with crimson and gold. As I said, there's plenty of gold around the tower. Our four-posters are covered with thick scarlet blankets (we have quite windy nights up in the towers) and are embroidered with gold. Gold chandeliers cast warm glows all around."

Contents

Entrance

Gryffindor corridor and the Fat Lady's portrait

The entrance to the Gryffindor common room is concealed under the portrait of the Fat Lady, on the lavish Gryffindor Landing.

To enter one must present the Fat Lady with the correct password of the week. However, getting the password wrong means the student will have to wait the day for another student to come by and pass them the code.[1]

Description

"...the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it — and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cosy, round room full of squashy armchairs."

The common room is a circular room where Gryffindor students can relax after a long day of studying. It is full of squashy armchairs, tables, and a bulletin board where school notices, ads, lost posters, etc. can be posted. The common room is decorated in several shades of red, which is associated with the house. The common room is comfortable, but not more comfortable than the Hufflepuff basement.[2]

There are many windows that look out onto the grounds of the school, and a large fireplace dominates one wall. The mantle of the fireplace is adorned with a portrait of a lion.[3] The fireplace is also connected to the Floo Network, but as it is extremely public except in the dead of night. The walls are decorated with scarlet tapestries that depict witches and wizards, but also various animals. There are also bookcases located in the room, filled with various novels.[4]

The Gryffindor Common Room as seen in the films differs slightly from its description in the books in that it is not a perfect circle, and that both the boys' and girls' dormitories are accessed via the same staircase: boys on the left, girls on the right.

The Chamber of Secrets video game is also the only place in the games or the films where the common room is accessed by crawling through an actual hole (albeit a square-shaped one). All other adaptations depict a doorway.

The common room as depicted in the video game adaptations of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a near-perfect replica of the common room as seen in the films. One very subtle difference is that in the video games the stairs leading to the dormitories only go up, creating the misconception that there's only one dorm room for the boys (shared by Harry and the other boys in his year) and one for the girls. In the films (although it is difficult to notice unless you pay attention) you can see that, in addition to going up, the stairs also lead down (presumably to more dormitories). In the books it is stated that Harry's dorm is located at the top of the stairs.

Gryffindor is the only Common Room whose guardian/entrance is known to have changed at some point, the Fat Lady being replaced by Sir Cadogan.